1. Technical Field
This invention generally relates to a retail food merchandising apparatus and method. This invention more specifically relates to self-service frozen food merchandising.
2. Background Art
Following the rise to prominence of xe2x80x9cconvenience storesxe2x80x9d as suburban marketplaces, attempts have been made to improve the merchandising of frozen food to convenience store customers. The original baseline method is simply to display frozen food in a freezer case for the consumer to purchase, take home, and prepare. An improvement in this method was to provide a microwave oven on the convenience store premises to allow heating of the various frozen foods offered. The amount of time and the proper power setting for each of the many frozen foods offered, despite conventionally being printed on the food packaging, is sometimes difficult to determine for a particular microwave oven, requiring some disappointing experiments by the consumer.
A separate problem in convenience store merchandising is the problem of penetration for non-franchise producers. Most convenience stores are franchises, so the floor layout of the merchandising displays and the contents of those displays is largely predetermined. In order to have a new product marketed in the convenience store, it may have to displace a product in a carefully calculated merchandising scheme. This may be a very difficult obstacle for an outside producer to overcome. Even when that obstacle is overcome, additional problems face an outside producer of a new product before it may be profitably added to the convenience store""s merchandising scheme. Adding a product may require modifying the store floor plan or utility outlets. This is a substantial obstacle to acceptance of a new product by the store management. An example of this problem is an earlier attempt by the inventor to market frozen food through convenience stores. U.S. Pat. No. D438,403 S to Greenburg (Mar. 6, 2001) shows the outward configuration of a merchandise display case for frozen food. Some devices of this design, in operation, required three separate electrical outlets and would not run on standard 12 amp/120 volt lines. Necessary modifications to accommodating utility outlets in convenience stores were an obstacle to market penetration and profitability.
It would be advantageous to the art to have an apparatus and method for easily penetrating convenience store markets with frozen food displays. The method and apparatus should minimize the costs and disruptions of previous systems while maximizing the convenience of purchasing to the consumer.
Accordingly, an apparatus and method are disclosed for penetrating convenience store frozen food markets with a customer-engaging frozen food display. The customer-engaging food merchandising module comprises three units: a food storage and display unit releasably attached to a food preparation and display unit, and a shell unit releasably attached to at least one of the other two units. One embodiment of the apparatus comprises: a glass-door freezer for storing and displaying at least one frozen food, a microwave oven attached to the freezer, and a shell attached to the freezer. Embodiments of the shell are configured to have widths co-extensive with the width of the base and advertising and instructional graphics placed thereon to give the modular apparatus a unitary appearance. The microwave oven has one or more pre-programmed buttons corresponding to each of the foods displayed in the freezer, each button activating the microwave oven to correctly heat a corresponding frozen food. The shell may extend above the freezer/microwave combination. The apparatus may be completely assembled in a factory and shipped ready-to-use. Maintenance may be by replacement of defective units, rather than the entire apparatus. The entire apparatus plugs into one ordinary wall outlet for electrical power. The invention also extends to non-frozen foods and preparation methods other than just heating.
The foregoing and other features and advantages of the present invention will be apparent from the following more detailed description of the particular embodiments of the invention, as illustrated in the accompanying drawings.